"Irene," said her listener, firmly. "If you persist in talking, I shall have to send for Erskine. You must swallow this sedative and then lie still and let me talk. I will say in just a minute all I want to, and then we will both be quiet and you will try to sleep, for Erskine's sake. It isn't all over; it is just beginning. We cannot undo the past, but we can make another thing of the present--and the future. I promise you, before God, and call on Him to witness, that I will never by word or look reveal to Erskine one word of what we have said or of what I know, unless you tell me to do so. When you are well and strong again, you will decide how much or how little you want to tell him. God will show you what is right and you will want to do right; I am sure of it. And we will love each other, you and I, and help each other. Two women who love one man as you and I love Erskine Burnham should be very much to each other. Now I am not going to say another word."
She bent her head and kissed the sick woman on her forehead--her first voluntary caress.
Irene, who had closed her eyes and was death-like in her stillness, opened them again and looked steadily at her. Then she said with slow conviction in her tones:--
BUT Ruth Burnham went to her room that night in a tumult of pain and self-reproach keener than she had felt for years.
As plainly as though a book had been opened before her, and a solemn unseen figure had pointed to the page, she read the story of her failure.
She had tried to be good to this woman, she had been outwardly patient with her faults, she had been long suffering, she had been silent over wrongs--she had effaced herself in a thousand ways, but she had been as cold as ice. There had been nothing in her face or voice to invite the confidence of this younger, weaker woman. There had been nothing in her daily attitude toward her to suggest the love and sympathy of Christ.
She cried to Him for forgiveness, for the privilege of beginning again, for wisdom to know just how to do it. And then she prayed for Irene in a way that, with all her trying, she had not been able to do before.
It came to her while on her knees that she would tell Irene of Maybelle's beautiful faith and daily praying for her mother, without knowing that it was her mother.